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Mirror case (valve de miroir) (Front)

Mirror case (valve de miroir) (Front)
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Subject
Secular. Courtly love.

Repository Institution
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Boston, Museum of Fine Arts

51.2471

Ivory or bone

Height: 108mm (diameter)
Depth: 12mm

Meeting of lovers (courting couple); offering of a chaplet; lady holding a chaplet; dog burying a bone; tree.

Ann Arbor 1975: French (Paris), early 15th century.
Randall 1993: Tuscan, 1420-1440.
Museum's opinion 2011: Italian, 14th century.


Attribution
Unknown

Object Condition
Missing: corner terminals (?).
Hole in the upper part: 'suggests that this plaque was once attached to the other half of the mirror casing by a short pin, upon which the two halves could rotate to expose or cover the mirror within' (Ann Arbor, 1975, p. 111). Lost lower portion rebuilt with wood (or plaster?).

Provenance
Collection of Prince Liechtenstein, Vienna. Bought from Leopold Blumka, New York, in 1951 for $600 (Samuel Putnam Avery Fund).

Bibliography
Images of Love and Death in Renaissance and Late Medieval Art, exhibition catalogue, ed. by W. R. Levin, Ann Harbor, University of Michigan, November 1975-January 1976, no. 73, pl. VII.
R. H. Randall, The Golden Age of Ivory: Gothic Ivory Carvings in North American Collections (New York, 1993), no. 216.


Image

Photograph © 15 July 2012 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Credit Line: Samuel Putnam Avery Fund.

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